


Trust Me

by Josselin



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 14:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13503528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: “He has sent no messenger,” said Nikandros. “Our scouts have not seen him--"“He will come,” Damen said.





	Trust Me

“Trust me,” Laurent had said. Wait three days at Ravenel, and then meet me at Charcy. Trust me. 

They were approaching Charcy from the south. The Regent would come from the north and the northwest. Laurent would come with reinforcements from the west. Damen had made this plan with Laurent standing over a map spread on a table at Ravenel. Now, he was on horseback looking out over the land itself.

“The ground is poor,” Nikandros said, surveying the landscape. Three of the scouts hadn’t come back and visibility was poor. Fog settled over the valley.

Damen nodded. The plan had depended on that, when he and Laurent had formed it together. The Regent needed a reason to overcommit, and the geography of the battlefield being so obviously in his favor was a reason. 

“He has sent no messenger,” said Nikandros. “Our scouts have not seen him--"

“He will come,” Damen said. 

Makedon moved his horse into a position next to Nikandros. He also eyed the landscape, and made a dissatisfied noise in his throat. “Why do we not fight Veretians on land where we have the advantage? A few miles further south—”

“We have allies,” said Damen. “We must do as we have agreed upon.”

Makedon grunted. “I haven’t agreed to fight on bad ground.”

“I have agreed for you, as your king,” said Damen, and Makedon turned his horse around, still frowning.

Nikandros spoke in a low voice. “None of the men will like this, old friend. We could make a new plan.”

“This is my plan,” said Damen. “He will come.”

Nikandros placed a hand on Damen’s forearm. “I have only just found you again.”

Damen grasped Nikandros’s forearm in return, changing the concerned touch Nikandros had offered to the same type of honor clasp they had used when training as boys. It was a traditional pose for making oaths. “I was blind to many things, Nikandros. I was naive when you warned me about Kastor; I was foolish when you cautioned me about Jokaste. I was similarly blind when I first arrived in Vere, and I did not see things as they were, at first. I know that I still have much to learn. But I have seen Laurent make plans, and I have seen him execute plans. I have fought beside him. I made this plan with him and a victory against the Regent is of far more importance to him than it is to us. So I am telling you that it is different, now. I am different now. He will come.”

Nikandros’s hand was warm on his arm, above the gold cuff. “Is he blond, like his older brother?”

Damen laughed, and let go of Nikandros’s arm. “It’s not like that.”

Nikandros loosened his grasp a moment later. “I think it’s exactly like that.”

But then there was a horn, and the noise of arrows on the wind, and the Regent’s men were upon them. 

There was no further time for arguing. There was only fighting. Damen shouted orders and tried to make sense of the initial chaos. He could hear Nikandros doing the same. The field was filled with the sound of the Regent’s men shouting “Prince Killer!” in Veretian and the corresponding sound of Makedon’s men’s traditional war cries.

Now, Damen thought in his head, but when he had a moment to raise his head and scan the horizon, Laurent was nowhere to be seen.

Damen found himself fighting alongside Jord for a short while, and then the second wave of the Regent’s men hit them from the north-west. Now, Damen thought again, looking up. Now. And he spotted them, through the fog, a crest of blue coming over the hillside.

Damen was far enough into the field, now, that he could make out the Regent specifically, his helm and the congregation of Veretian generals surrounding him. They were surprised by the arrival of more troops over the hill, and they were trying to adjust, each of the generals shouting orders and pointing at various points on the field, to little effect. Makedon led his men off to the left to shore up any attempts to flee to the west. Damen pressed on toward the Regent. The men in blue livery poured on to the field.

Damen tried to look over to see Laurent amongst the new arrivals. It was impossible. They were all dressed the same, and Laurent was not wearing a helm to identify himself. Damen thought he recognized Laurent’s horse, and then the rider on it fell, and Damen turned around to see, and his heart skipped for a moment when the rider on the ground had blond hair. But the face was not Laurent’s, and now that the blue riders were upon them, Damen realized that they all had blond hair—wigs, Damen supposed, or some kind of dye—presumably to hide which among them was the prince. The Regent’s helm and costume on the field made him a target. Laurent had ensured that he was not a similar target by arriving amidst several dozen men who were identically dressed.

Nikandros would find this hilarious, Damen thought, but there was no time to speak with Nikandros fighting next to him, and he pushed on toward Laurent’s uncle. 

Damen became aware, slowly, that Nikandros’s steady, practical swordsmanship at his side was being replaced with flashes of brilliance, an insouciant swordsmanship that Damen’s father would have never tolerated. 

Damen turned to the side, and caught a glimpse of blue eyes for a moment, and he continued fighting with renewed vigor. 

They reached the red cloaks of the Veretian honor guard. Half of the generals had already fled. Damen struck down the man in the crowned helm; Laurent turned to face one of the members of the honor guard in a red cloak.

Damen dismounted and tore the helm off, but it wasn’t the Regent. It was no one; no man that Damen recognized. Some puppet, playing at the same type of game that Laurent had engineered. “It is not him.”

“I took him,” said Laurent. Damen looked at the honor guard who had just fallen to the ground, and when the red cloak fell to the side, he could see that it was the Regent after all. 

Then Laurent half-slid, half-fell off his horse, and Damen dropped his sword in an effort to catch him. 

“Are you injured?”

“Scratched,” said Laurent, clutching his shoulder with one hand. The blue fabric had a rapidly spreading red stain. 

Damen grabbed for the fallen Regent’s red cloak and used it to tie up Laurent’s wounded arm, hoping to slow the bleeding.

Nikandros appeared next to him. “We must get Laurent to safety,” Damen said. “He’s hurt.”

“Damen, it’s over,” said Nikandros.

As Damen looked out over the field he realized that was so. The fall of the Regent had caused the remaining Veretians on the field to surrender their arms; they were being taken captive by Makedon’s men. The field was a mess of wounded and dying men and horses.

Jord had started up a chant, upon the Regent’s fall, of “Long live the king!” in Veretian, and it was starting to carry across the field. 

“You won,” Damen told Laurent, who was looking worrisomely pale.

“You won,” said Laurent.

Damen dropped to one knee in front of Laurent, as though he were wooing him back in the gardens of Arles and not in the middle of a battlefield. Nikandros made a shocked and displeased noise. “Long live the king,” Damen said, staring up at Laurent. 

Laurent nodded for him to rise, and Damen did, and then it was Laurent’s turn to look up at him, because Damen was a head taller when they stood next to each other. Laurent reached his uninjured arm up, and placed his hand, still sticky with blood, on Damen's neck, and tugged him to lean down a bit, and then Laurent kissed him, in the middle of the battlefield, with Nikandros looking on in dismay and the echoing chants of "Long live the king" getting louder. 

Laurent mounted his borrowed horse, again, and when he swayed precariously on top of it Damen mounted behind him to steady him, and they rode to the medical tent where Paschal and his helpers had set up their supplies, and Damen made a fuss until Paschal was interrupted tending to someone else to see to Laurent's shoulder to stop the bleeding. 

Nikandros came to give Damen a full report of the casualties while Paschal was treating Laurent with some kind of salve. The report was good. Losses had been minimal with Laurent's reinforcements arriving precisely in time, and the victory had been complete. Makedon's men seemed especially pleased and were notching their belts already. Nikandros had arranged for the Akielons to bury their dead and was finding the highest ranking Veretian captive to organize the same for the Regent's men.

"He came," Damen said. 

Nikandros nodded. "He is blond, though," and Damen laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> [All of the author's Captive Prince fanfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=kudos_count&work_search%5Bfandom_ids%5D%5B%5D=3516977&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=0&user_id=Josselin), [come follow me on tumblr](http://josselinkohl.tumblr.com/)


End file.
